NEW YORK (AP) – A year ago, the life of Elvia Banuelos looked up. The 39-year-old mother of two young children said she was confident in a new management-level job with the US Census Bureau – she would earn money in addition to the child benefits she receives to keep her children healthy, happy and in daycare. .
But then the coronavirus was declared a global pandemic Last March, forcing hundreds of millions of people into strict lockdowns, Banuelos’ outlook changed. The new job fell through, child support payments stopped due to a job loss, and she became a mother who stayed at home when the daytime worries were over.
“All I could do was pay my rent, so everything else was difficult,” said Banuelos of Orland, California.
Millions of Americans have taken a devastating toll during the years of coronavirus pandemic, from lost loved ones to lost jobs. More than 530,000 people died in the United States. Those losses have not affected all Americans equally, with communities of color particularly hard hit by both the virus and the economic fallout.
A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that compared to white Americans during the pandemic, black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to lose job and other income, and those who lost income are more likely have to find themselves in deep financial holes.
That’s in addition to the fact that black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to say that they are close to someone who has died from COVID-19 and are less likely to receive a vaccination.According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pandemic killed black and Hispanic Americans at rates out of proportion to their population in the US.
Banuelos, who identifies as Latina, said the disparity in pandemic experiences between “the upper class and those in more difficult situations” became abundantly clear to her early on in the pandemic. Even after two rounds of federal direct stimulus checks, she felt she was further behind than wealthy Americans.
The relief “didn’t last that long,” Banuelos said.
In all, 62% of Hispanic Americans and 54% of Black Americans lost some form of family income during the pandemic, including job losses, pay cuts, hour cuts, and unpaid leave, compared to 45% of white Americans.
For other racial and ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Indians, the sample size is too small to analyze in the AP-NORC poll.
Jeremy Shouse, a North Carolina restaurant manager, saw his hours drop sharply during the early months of the pandemic when the small business was forced to close. Shouse, a 33-year-old black man, said the restaurant has since reopened, but went from more than $ 5,000 in-house a day prior to the pandemic to just $ 200 some days.
“A year later and things are still not the same,” said Shouse, adding that his wages are down 20%.
About 6 in 10 Hispanics and about half of black Americans say their households are still facing the consequences of the pandemic’s loss of income, compared to about 4 in 10 white Americans. Black and Hispanic Americans in particular are also likely to say the impact has been a major one.
“We see that systemic racism plays a big role in this process,” said Rashawn Ray, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute who co-authored a recent report on racial inequalities and the Detroit pandemic. “I think what we’ll see once the dust settles is that the racial wealth divide has even widened.”
For a long time, there have been racial differences in the way Americans experience economic downturns and recessions. After a recovery from the Great Recession and well into the Trump administration, the unemployment gap between black and white Americans has narrowed due to strong job growth and economic activity. But a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a gap that had narrowed to just 3 percentage points, widened to 5.4 percentage points in August last year, wiping out some of the gains made during the recovery. .
The AP-NORC poll also shows that Latin American Americans in particular think it will take a long time to dig their way out of the financial hole. About half of Hispanics say they still feel the effects of loss of income and that it will take at least six months to recover financially. About a third of black Americans say the same, compared to about a quarter of white Americans.
Forty-one percent of Hispanic Americans say their current family income is lower than it was at the start of the pandemic, compared to 29% of Black Americans and 25% of White Americans.
And about 4 in 10 black and Hispanic Americans were unable to pay a bill in the past month, compared to about 2 in 10 white Americans.
For people of color, the trauma sustained as a result of economic turmoil is exacerbated by massive personal losses. About 30% of Black and Hispanic Americans say they have a close friend or relative who has died from the coronavirus since March last year, compared to 15% of white Americans.
Debra Fraser-Howze, founder of Choose Healthy Life, an initiative dedicated to addressing disparities in public health through the Black Church, said she is confident in the black community’s ability to recover economically and medically.
“The community’s economic emergency is bleak,” said Fraser-Howze, “and it will get worse for a long time. But we’re a community of survivors – we’ve come through slavery and Jim Crow. We’ve figured out how to live. I believe and am confident that our community will return. ”
Swanson reported from Washington. Morrison, who reported from New York, and Stafford, who reported from Detroit, are part of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.
The AP-NORC survey of 1,434 adults was conducted Feb. 25-March 1 using a sample of NORC’s Probability-Based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.